This past week, on Friday, 31 July, we celebrated the feast of that great saint Ignatius of Loyola. It was this romantic wanna be knight errant who founded the Society of Jesus, popularly known as the Jesuits. Ignatius, as his Spiritual Exercises show, is a spiritual master. Anyone who is the process of discerning anything can learn something from Ignatius. I recently came across a secular article that discusses his process of discernment: "What a 16th-century mystic can teach us about making good decisions."
Instead of Morning Prayer, which, along with Evening Prayer, I pray every day, on Friday I prayed the Office of Readings. The second reading for the Feast of Saint Ignatius of Loyola was by Luís Gonzalez, one of Ignatius's early companions. Writing about the soldier from Loyola's conversion, which happened while he was convalescing from a serious leg wound sustained in battle, Gonzalez noted: "Ignatius was passionately fond of reading worldly books of fiction and tales of knight-errantry."
After reading the excerpt from Gonzalez's biography of Ignatius, I did a short homilette on Facebook:
Perhaps the fact that no such books [books on knights errant] could be found in the house during his convalescence but only a life of Christ and the lives of saints rescued him from being Don Quixote! Either route, he was committed to asceticism, something we sorely lack today.__________________________________________________________
Following Christ can seem Quixotic. But the windmill, it turns out, is a cross- real and the key to understanding reality
It is my routine to practice lectio divina with the Sunday readings Monday-Wednesday each week. After meditating on the word or short phrase that strikes me and composing a prayer, I write it in a journal. I then spend some time in quiet contemplation before making a few notes in the same journal. I use a cheap composition notebook.
This week, as a change of pace, I am going to share the fruit of my practice of lectio. I was surprised, looking back at my journal on Thursday, that there was a definite theme this week. While this doesn't always happen, it often does. It goes to show how lectio moves the scriptures from being God's word in some abstract sense to being an inspired word for me.
From Isaiah 55:1-3: "listen, that you may have life" (verse 3). From the marvelous eighth chapter of Paul's Letter to the Romans (8:35.37-39): "him who loved us" (verse 37). Finally, from Matthew 14:13-21, which is almost too long for lectio: "moved with pity" (verse 14).
Contemplating the phrase "listen, that you may have life," brought to mind the opening sentence of Saint Benedict's Regula:
Obsculta, o fili, praecepta magistri, et inclina aurem cordis tui, et admonitionem pii patris libenter excipe et efficaciter comple, ut ad eum per oboedientiae laborem redeas, a quo per inoboedientiae desidiam recesseras- Listen, O my son, to the precepts of thy master, and incline the ear of thy heart, and cheerfully receive and faithfully execute the admonitions of thy loving Father, that by the toil of obedience thou mayest return to Him from whom by the sloth of disobedience thou hast gone awayIt is not our love for God but God's love for us that ultimately matters. Jesus is God's love for us not made manifest but made flesh. Like those who followed him to the deserted place, Jesus sees us in our need and has pity on us because he loves us. Because he loves us, he gives us bread to eat, which turns out to be himself.
I pray that today is a good beginning of an even better week. Peace to you, dear reader.
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